ABSTRACT
Introduction To defend the conduct of targeted killings, the Obama administration has made claims on something higher than the laws of war – the principles of the laws of war.2 In practice, the Obama administration’s defence of targeted killings works because it is able to rely on legal interpretations that enable it to define its own conduct as legal, irrespective of the similarity of these interpretations to those of the Bush administration. The Obama administration seeks to depict its conduct as ethical in order to distance itself from policies of the Bush administration, but also to highlight the supposed normality of its actions. If the Obama administration’s conduct is defensible in legal terms, why does it defend targeted killings in ethical terms? Again, legitimacy is the principle issue: by making moral claims, the Obama administration derives legitimacy from the moral force of these claims. By claiming that it abides by the principles of the laws of war, the Obama administration seeks to ground its defence of targeted killings in shared cultural values. By arguing that the United States’ ‘moral authority’ is its ‘strongest currency in the world’, Barack Obama seeks to root his entire approach to national security in US ‘values’.3 This link between principles and values and the legal status of targeted killings is important because, as seen in Chapters 1 and 2, the Obama administration’s reconciliations of its use of targeted killings with international law relies on a claim to abide by the principles of the laws of war. Outlining this reconciliation, Eric Holder used ‘principles’ in many ways. He spoke of the use of force ‘in a manner consistent with applicable law of war principles’, as well as outlining: ‘any such use of lethal force by the United States will comply with the four fundamental law of war principles governing the use of force’.4 In using the concept of principle, rather than instrumental law, Holder is affirming that the United States sees itself as conducting war in accordance with the principles of the laws of war.
